Attracting the power cohort to the Tenth District

A long debated issue in regional economics is whether ?people follow jobs? or ?jobs follow people.? That is, do people move to where jobs are available, or do employers locate their facilities where potential employees reside? If people follow jobs, an appropriate economic development policy would be to concentrate on luring employers, especially large employers. This view reflects many traditional state and local economic development policies. If, on the other hand, jobs follow people, a better policy would be to focus on luring skilled people by creating an environment that is an attractive place to live. ; Increasingly, state and local economic development agents are following the latter policy. In particular, many state and local governments are seeking to attract a ?power cohort? of young, childless, college-educated residents. These people are not only attractive to employers but are typically more responsive to the quality of the urban milieu, which can be influenced by policy. Because singles are generally more mobile than families with school-aged children, much of the economic development effort is focused on that subgroup, but the effort also focuses on childless couples. ; In the Tenth District most cities are relatively weak in attracting this power cohort. Specifically, the district cities as a whole attract fewer migrants from this cohort than would be expected given their populations, wage levels, and housing costs. This fact raises an important question: Why? ; Edmiston argues that the relative performance of migration across Tenth District cities?and elsewhere in the United States?is largely a function of two sets of factors. The district does well based on the first set of factors: unemployment, wages, and taxes. The district is relatively weak based on the second set of factors: cultural and recreational amenities, intellectual capital, topography, and crime.